Governor releases e-mails showing state’s first reaction

lansing, mich. » A day after doctors reported high levels of lead in Flint children, Gov. Rick Snyder’s top aide told him the “real responsibility” for the city’s water issues rested with local government officials, e-mails released Wednesday showed.

Then-chief of staff Dennis Muchmore later told the governor that residents were “caught in a swirl of misinformation” about lead contamination and that it was up to city and county leaders to confront the issue, according to the e-mails.

“Of course, some of the Flint people respond by looking for someone to blame instead of working to reduce anxiety,” Muchmore wrote. “We can’t tolerate increased lead levels in any event, but it’s really the city’s water system that needs to deal with it.”

In a Sept. 25 e-mail, Muchmore said he could not “figure out why the state is responsible” before noting that former state Treasurer Andy Dillon had signed off on the city’s plans to build a water pipeline from Lake Huron, which required a temporary switch to the Flint River during construction.

So, he explained, “we’re not able to avoid the subject.”

By early October, the Snyder administration was forced to acknowledge the validity of the lead concerns and help Flint return to the Detroit water system.

The two-term Republican released more than 270 pages of e-mails a day after his annual State of the State speech in which he apologized again for the emergency and pledged to act. He called the release of the messages — which are exempt from Michigan’s publicrecords law — “unprecedented” but necessary so people “know the truth.”

He did not release the emails of his staff, drawing criticism from Democrats and open-government advocates.

Flint’s water became contaminated with lead when the city began drawing from the river in 2014 as a cost-cutting measure while under state financial management. The water was not properly treated to keep lead from pipes from leaching into the supply.

Snyder has said he was first briefed on the “potential scope and magnitude” of the crisis on Sept. 28. State epidemiologists validated local physicians’ findings on Oct. 1, and the governor said he immediately ordered the distribution of filters along with water and blood testing.

In December, Snyder learned that the task force he appointed to investigate the crisis had concluded that the Department of Environmental Quality was primarily to blame. The task force chairman, Ken Sikkema, said in a separate message that the finding was “critical and urgent.”